Climate Effects on Food Supply

Introduction

In the coming decades the agricultural sector faces many challenges stemming from growing global populations, land degradation, and loss of cropland to urbanization. Although food production has been able to keep pace with population growth on the global scale, periodically there are serious regional deficits, and poverty related nutritional deficiencies affect close to a billion people globally. In this century climate change is one factor that could affect food production and availability in many parts of the world, particularly those most prone to drought and famine.

These data sets are based on two studies that use similar methods to identify likely impacts of climate change on crop yields. The first, Potential Impacts of Climate Change on World Food Supply: Data Sets from a Major Crop Modeling Study, was released in 2001, and the second, Effects of Climate Change on Global Food Production from SRES Emissions and Socioeconomic Scenarios, was released in 2009.